Franchise Debate: Super Giants/That Barney Ronay Article

 

12/08

Manchester Super Giants from 2026

The Hundred is just influencer sport and is the worst cricket thing ever invented

Barney Ronay  The Guardian

Who’s your favourite influencer? For me it’s Ashton Hall, an inspiring and cheerful man on YouTube whose fame has been brief, beautiful and as fragile as a butterfly lifespan. But who was for a period earlier this year the greatest influencer on the planet, propelled to that status by a video showing his “extreme morning routine”.

The routine is amazing. It starts at 3.52am. The standard kick-off time for The Grind used to be 5am. Sod that. Ashton Hall gets up at 3.52. Ashton Hall gets up the day before to prepare for his getting up.

In the video, fast-cut and excitingly soundtracked, he showcases a rigidly structured roster of wellness acts. He journals. He press-ups. He sprints. He prays. He moisturises with banana peel. Sombrely, tenderly, he dunks his face in iced mineral water. He leaps into a pool and lurks for ages, being well. We don’t get to see him vaping and having a shit. But if we did it would be slick, snappy, moving, cinematic and soundtracked by clunk, fizz, snap fzzt, pft, shtm.

The effect is visceral. Ashton Hall in his morning routine is like some super substance, like perfect human metal. His body is a clean space, his mind pristine. He looks as though he smells of musk, lemon, honey and breast milk. He looks like the word Readiness and also Love, Hope and Money, packed into a single preternaturally muscular torso, eyes like Roman candles, an avatar of American can-do, a place that is all frontier, where it’s always a sunrise, and where Ashton Hall is always out there at 3.52am like a sandpiper running ahead of the surf line.

The routine ends with the start of his work day at 9.26am, signalled by an unseen hand presenting him with avocado on toast as he settles gravely at his desk. By this stage Ashton Hall has been up for almost six hours, brooding, banana-peeling, communing with his inner energy. And by now some alarm bells have begun to ring.

The thing with Ashton Hall, the great unspoken question is … what does he actually do? What is all this preparation for? There is a vague hint of some kind of business being done. We hear him say: “We’ve got to get at least 10,000”, but he could be talking about playing Minecraft or making a Lego petrol station. Is anyone else on that phone line? Is it plugged in? Is the receiver actually a frankfurter?

The fact is, and we can say this now because it has become a huge self-fulfilling success, the morning routine is the thing. It is the content. Ashton Hall is a man who is always getting ready, whose business is being ready for business, like watching the same glittering marble endlessly shifted about between the cups of a street magician.

This is the real brilliance of Ashton Hall. The routine is like a deeply caustic one-man art installation, a real-time satire on the decline of industry, on the fact all life is simply staging and show now, getting ready to be ready, because looking like a human engaged in human activity is the last remaining pillar of reality.

Once you’ve accepted this it becomes deeply addictive. There is another video where you can watch Ashton Hall running for an hour, not actually going anywhere, just running, with a kind of Palladian symmetry to his lines and angles, arms pumping, all balance and perfect levers, a Leonardo set to the music of the spheres, or at least to the music of a high-energy techno montage.

And this is fine because we are post activity now, post making or doing. Wealth is just numbers moving around. People are shapes and sounds. The world is a stage-set made of pixels. Ashton Hall knows this. He’s up at 4am preparing for it because preparing is content, because we will simply slide down the surface of things, beautifully.

OK. Fine. A trick of the light. The thing that isn’t really a thing. A sales pitch that is, it turns out, the only product. What, you might ask, does this have to do with the Hundred? Well, there you make an interesting point.

Because three years on, at the start of the final season before the new ownership kicks in, we can say this now. What the England and Wales Cricket Board has created is basically Ashton Hall cricket, a stage pretending to be a thing. And as things go, this isn’t even a very good one, to the extent that pound for pound, product versus hype, there is a fair argument the Hundred is the worst cricket thing ever invented.

I’ve tried hard with it. I’ve watched the games and enjoyed the family vibe. There will always be good bits, because cricket is good. I know there are also commentators who like to say that the Hundred is good because it is disruptive and new, it freaks out the squares, and that’s all fine.

Plus there is of course a more managed gush around the product. Everyone here is hyped up. Everyone is Ashton Halling it. More cynically the Hundred has done a good job of selling itself on the back of manipulative waffle about diversity and openness, notably the lie that this is the only way, the only way you hear, that women’s cricket can be properly funded.

Kids like it, we are told. Do they? One key thing having kids tells you is that kids really shouldn’t be allowed to decide the best thing to do. Kids also like drinking four litres of Dr Pepper for dinner. As for that parroted line that young people only like short things and brain-frazzling clips on social media, this has long since been discredited. Try watching a Marvel film. It’s like sitting through six hours of medieval church music.

The reality is simple enough. The Hundred is just a bad product, bad sport, a force-grown entity that struggles to justify its bizarre state of prominence. The gear change from a brilliant Test series is the obvious point of contrast. But you don’t need to go that far. The Hundred has terrible staging. The cramming of a complex activity into such a small space means the basic nuts and bolts are weird and fiddly, with no room for narrative or for players to properly excel.

The Hundred has generated very few moments. It has developed no male players. It has helped by giving female cricketers more games to play and an income stream, but has the England team got better or worse in its lifespan? Base, low-skill, tediously repetitive acts are met with head-slapping disbelief, booming victory music. This is just colour, noise, content without features. There are 32 Hundred games. Why? Why not screen the same one 32 times and rest the players?

More widely, we know the Hundred has been a loss leader. As of this week we also know there is no evidence the Hundred has actually attracted any new people to the sport. Chuck in the confusion of the summer, an age of talented but pathway-less players, the Jacob Bethell effect.

Does it really matter? This thing is clearly a stepping stone, a sellable warm-up routine, prep for the actual business of the future. In a final monetising of the family furniture the ECB has managed to sell this empty box for a lot of money.

There are two things worth saying about this. For all the backslapping over headline figures, this is basically severance money. It will keep some jobs running. It will also disappear into debt and losses like water down an open drain. Selling off the English summer. Is this really the most logical way of trying to save the English summer?

And from this perspective there is also cause to be hopeful now. Change must be good. Basically, bring on the new owners as quickly as possible. I used to think the problem with English cricket was that it was run by marketing people. In fact the problem is being run by really bad marketing people.

A common refrain is that the new owners won’t have English cricket’s interests at heart. Well, who has down the years? How could they be any worse than the previous administrators, a stream of semi-competent business people called things like Lord Cakebread and Sir Gordon Cardboard-Box?

Making an English IPL, for example, sounds like an excellent idea. The IPL is for people who actually like cricket. It makes players. It works. At the very least it seems highly likely the new owners will move on from the silliest format and make it into a T20, a big step in the right direction.

When that comes, who will remember this interlude, our Ashton Hall phase, noise and energy for the sake of noise and energy? English cricket’s admin arm has long since lost faith in making its best parts work and in the intelligence of its own customers. So bring on the future. Put down the hotdog phone. Remove the banana skin. Silence the generically shrieking voices. Can we just get on to the actual thing now?

‘The Hundred is not universally popular – but that’s true about Test cricket’

Tech Titans own 49 per cent of Lord’s-based London Spirit and say there will be tension between shortest and longest forms of the game

Will Macpherson 07/08

The leader of the Tech Titans, the new investors into Lord’s-based London Spirit, has called for better planning to prevent the Hundred starting immediately after an epic Test series such as England v India.

Nikesh Arora, the Indian-American CEO of Palo Alto Networks, has pulled together more than a dozen leading business figures, mainly from tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and YouTube, to invest in the Lord’s Hundred franchise.

In January, they won an extraordinary three-hour auction which valued London Spirit at £295m. They bought a 49 per cent share to partner with MCC, the owners of Lord’s, having seen off competition from Sanjiv Goenka, the owner of Indian Premier League team Lucknow Super Giants, as bids rose in £3m increments.

They completed the purchase last week, and a large number of the consortium have been at Lord’s this week. They have played cricket with their kids in the nets, held events for their companies, had dinner together (with Rishi Sunak in the building), and strolled on the Lord’s pitch with their families after the first game.

On the eve of that game, in the office of MCC director of cricket, Rob Lynch, members of the consortium spoke with Telegraph Sport about why they had invested such eye-watering sums into the Hundred, and what they hoped to achieve.

The following day, Spirit’s men’s team were well beaten by Oval Invincibles. Spirit were without marquee signings Jamie Smith and Jamie Overton, as well as England vice-captain Ollie Pope, all of whom had been involved in the stunning finish to the Test series. Arora does not want to see a repeat.

“Some of the guys were required to rest until a few days after the first match which is kind of disappointing,” he said. “I understand it. I think for the future it requires better planning. I would never want a sportsperson to be extended because we want them to play well for a very long period of time. They’ve just come out of a spectacular series, made even more spectacular by the ending. I’m still smiling from it.

“I just think that in future we have to make sure it’s timed in such a way that if you’re only going to have a 26-day tournament where many people invested hundreds of millions of pounds, it’s only fair that we create enough space so all the right people can play.”

‘Lord’s is the Mecca of cricket’

The consortium began when Satyan Gajwani, of Indian media giant Times Internet, visited Arora, his neighbour in California, to talk about the possibility of investing in Major League Cricket, which Gajwani helped found. Arora was more interested in investing in a cricket league that was already up and running, so Gajwani mentioned the Hundred, which he had considered investing in too. “I said I was going for the value option,” says Gajwani. In short, that meant neither of the London teams.

Arora disagreed. “Very simple rule I learnt from my friends – do not buy something in the city you never want to go to,” he laughs. “If I tell my wife I’m going to London, she’s like ‘let’s go straight away’. That is not true of every city in the world.

“Lord’s is like the Mecca of cricket. I grew up playing cricket. If I close my eyes and you ask me to pick where I’d be, I want to be at Lord’s.”

The consortium was never bothered, unlike some IPL teams, about being minority owners, with just 49 per cent. “I own less than 1 per cent of my company,” Arora says, wryly. “But I get to run it.”

Arora was at the coalface of the auction. He says he was not given carte blanche by his partners, and admits “we paid more than we thought we were going to”. Asked if there is any buyer’s remorse, he scoffs. Since the auction, the consortium has grown, and is thought to number around 20. Arora says there are “people with different levels of economic interest”, including some “who are enthusiastic, so we let them invest a little bit so they could be part of the excitement”.

The final negotiations were supposed to last eight weeks, but dragged to almost six months. In two cases (Oval and Trent Rockets, they are not yet concluded). Arora says there were many “pinch points” along the way with ECB, although the relationship with MCC seems smooth.

“I’ve lived a long life, and I’ve done a lot of deals,” he says. “And negotiations do not require one person to win, one to lose. Negotiations have to get us to a point where both of us feel a little uncomfortable and a lot more excited. We’ve got to a place where it’s a little uncomfortable with ECB. Then they have to show up with their A game, and we have to show with our A game. We’re happy with that. They’ll tell you they’re happy because they suddenly got a large amount of money.”

The consortium has already sorted new kit sponsors, Nike, and advertisers for the 2026 season, but is treating this season as a watching brief. That extends to the format of the competition, the name of their team, and whether Indian players will ever be involved. “It’s been four hot days since we’ve signed the deal,” laughs Arora. “So that is all to be continued. I think this is the year we get to participate and watch. We will learn a lot over the next 25 days.”

Gajwani chips in: “The coolest thing is, you’re taking the most storied historical institution of cricket, and you’re bringing a consortium which is very heavily leaning towards technology, innovation. And the thing that’s been very pleasant over the last few months has been, actually, there’s not much of a communication or culture gap. I told him [Arora] early on, I don’t know if Lord’s is right for us. But from the first meeting, that changed.”

It is put to the pair that the Hundred is not universally popular. “That’s true,” says Arora. “But that’s true about Test cricket too.”

Gajwani says: “We also saw that with the IPL in its first five years. Any new format is going to have tension, and there’s going to be tension between Tests and the Hundred. But I think overall, it’s good for the game. I think it attracts different audiences. It widens the scope of fans that could be interested in cricket.

“I’m very excited about what private capital brings to the game. It just brings more innovation. It pushes everyone to be more competitive. I’ve seen it across the world that capitalist and competitive tension is good for the game. It drives everyone to invest more, be stronger, think more creatively, be more innovative, both on the business and cricket side.

“Each of these leagues is about evangelising cricket in their own market. We are here to focus on building the British audience first and foremost.”

What of the consequences for the English game, if a supercharged Hundred cannibalises Test cricket? Arora describes that as a “high-quality problem”.

“If there is a place in the world, this has to succeed,” he says. “After India, it has to be here. Why shouldn’t a league in the UK succeed? This is where we all learnt our cricket.

“Think about the fact that there are so many new investors, this has been a windfall for English cricket, there’s going to be phenomenal facilities, phenomenal capability, kit. You know, many of the counties are on the edge of deciding how to keep growing the game of cricket because they’re financially constrained. This is the biggest windfall English cricket has ever had. People have to start looking at the glass half full.”

That is certainly their outlook across a breezy 45 minutes: glass half full, delighted to be sat overlooking the home of cricket.

“Many of us are neighbours [in California],” says Arora, smiling. “So to be here together is cool. If you can combine your passion with some kind of activity to gather with your friends, it’s a good thing. And hopefully all this will work out for all of us and we’ll not lose money.”

05/08

Free spending on players, Leicestershire's CEO speaks about H*ndred windfall money securing Counties futures

04/08

Final Year of the 100, as we know it

11/07

Each franchise has two remaining wildcard signings to make, this is due to happen on Tuesday 15th.

But before then Pravda trumpet that the R*ckets have signed as a replacement for the injured Hampshire bowler John Turner, Dilllon Pennington.

The Hundred: how might private investment in the tournament change cricket

Matthew Olczak 03/07 from Economics Observatory c/o the Grumbler

The Hundred cricket competition will soon have a new ownership structure. The sale of franchises will provide funds for the sport’s grassroots. But differences in the types of owners and ownership structures may bring bigger changes, including to TV rights and the county game.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is close to finalising the sale of shares in the Hundred franchises – the eight teams in the competition launched in 2021 – to private investors, raising over £500 million in revenue.

The investors include the owners of several Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises and Todd Boehly, co-owner and chairman of Chelsea football club (FC). This change in ownership could have significant implications for both the Hundred competition and the sport more widely.

Why was the Hundred competition created – and why are the franchises now being sold to private investors?

The Hundred cricket competition was launched by the ECB in 2021 with the ambition of taking cricket to a wider audience. Eight new city-based franchises were created – Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit, Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, Oval Invincibles, Southern Brave, Trent Rockets and Welsh Fire – and a new format designed to provide short matches that would appeal to newcomers attending games and watching on TV.

The highest level of domestic cricket in England and Wales has traditionally been made up of 18 county teams. Seven of these counties plus Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which owns Lord’s cricket ground in London (where county team Middlesex are based), each host one of the Hundred franchise teams.

The Hundred competition is run by the ECB, which controls sponsorship, the sale of TV rights and merchandising. The ECB then shares revenues raised from the competition with all the counties (as part of a broader agreement of financial support). The host counties also receive hosting fees and additional revenue from ticket sales, stadium hospitality and catering.

In 2024, the ECB started to pursue the idea of selling at least part ownership of these teams to private investors. It was hoped that this would bring in vital revenue to support the game of cricket, both at the recreational and domestic competition levels.

How is the Hundred structured?

The Hundred competition is very different from many sports leagues that operate in the UK (and Europe more widely). In football, for example, England has a league structure with the Premier League at the top, then the Championship, League One and League Two below this, and many semi-professional and amateur grassroots levels even further down. Promotion and relegation at the end of each season allows teams to move between these levels.

Systems of this kind are referred to by economists as open leagues. In contrast, in the Hundred, the same eight teams (in the men’s and women’s competitions) compete against each other every season – a system that economists call a closed league. Such arrangements are more common in US sports such as American football, baseball and basketball. Sports economists study the features of these different types of league structure (see, for example, Szymanski, 2012).

In closed leagues, as in the Hundred, many features – including sponsorship and TV contracts – are managed centrally by the league. In addition, regulations are in place to ensure financial stability and that the games between teams are competitively balanced. In both the Hundred and the IPL, auctions are used to allocate players between teams, and there are strict salary caps are in place.

Who has bought the Hundred franchises – and how much did they pay?

To facilitate the sale of the franchises, in 2024, the ECB gave 51% of each franchise to the host county (or MCC). The ECB then retained a 49% share in each franchise, which they would sell to private investors.

Eventually, after some bargaining from the domestic counties, it was agreed that revenue raised from selling the ECB’s share would see 10% given to the recreational game. Then, the next £275 million would be split 19 equal ways between the 18 counties and MCC, the next £150 million split 11 ways between the non-host counties, and any remaining revenue split equally between the 19 again.

The counties would also be able to sell some, or all, of their shares. If they chose to do so, they would get to keep 80% of the revenue raised, 10% would again be given to the recreational game, and the remaining 10% shared between the other counties and MCC.

In January 2025, bidding on the franchises started. Table 1 summarises how much each of the hosts has agreed to sell, who has agreed to buy the share in the franchise and how much they will pay for it. To aid comparisons, the final column shows the effective value of the franchise had they purchased 100% of it.

Table 1: Sale of the Hundred franchises

Franchise	Stake sold by the hosts (%)	Purchaser	Price paid (£ million)	Franchise valuation (£ million)
Birmingham Phoenix	0	Knighthead Capital Management, a New York-based investment firm	40	82
London Spirit	0	A consortium of Silicon Valley technology entrepreneurs	145	296
Manchester Originals	21	RPSG Group, Sanjiv Goenka's conglomerate (owners of Lucknow Super Giants, an IPL franchise)	81	116
Northern Superchargers	51	Sun Group, a media conglomerate (owners of Sunrisers Hyderabad, an IPL franchise)	100	100
Oval Invincibles	0	Reliance Industries (owners of Mumbai Indians, an IPL franchise)	60	122
Southern Brave	0	GMR Group, another Indian conglomerate (co-owners of Delhi Capitals, an IPL franchise)	48	98
Trent Rockets	0	Cain International, backed by Chelsea FC co-owner Todd Boehly, and several investment firms	40	82
Welsh Fire	0	Sanjay Govil, an Indian-American technology entrepreneur	40	82

Sources: ESPN, 2025a; ESPN, 2025b; The Guardian, 2025; Sky Sports, 2025.

Assuming that all these purchases are finalised, the bidding process has valued the franchises at a total of almost £1 billion. This would see the counties and MCC each getting at least £15 million in revenue and, under the negotiated terms, around £30 million would go to the non-host counties.

Several observations follow from the information in Table 1. First, most host counties decided to keep their shares in the franchises. Only Lancashire, host county of Manchester Originals, and Yorkshire, host county of Northern Superchargers, sold some of their stake.

This suggests that host counties were keen to maintain some control and share of future revenues. The exception is Yorkshire who decided to sell off their share completely, earning them an additional £40 million.

Second, a range of different organisations purchased the franchises. Strikingly, four of the franchises are now at least co-owned by companies that own teams in the IPL. GMR Group, new owners of Southern Brave, are a particularly interesting example, since they have also taken over the host county, Hampshire. This creates a unique situation where the host county and the Hundred franchise are under single, private ownership.

All four of these IPL owners also own teams in the SAT20, the South African equivalent competition of the IPL, which was launched in 2023. Reliance Industries, the new co-owners of Oval Invincibles, also own a team in the newly established US Major League Cricket (MLC).

The other purchases of the Hundred franchises will also result in forms of cross-ownership. The new part-owners of Welsh Fire also own a team in the US MLC. In addition, there will be three franchises partially owned by investment firms or technology entrepreneurs with no existing links to major cricket competitions.

Despite this, Trent Rockets’ new ownership syndicate includes Todd Boehly who is co-owner of Chelsea FC, the French football team Strasbourg and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. Similarly, the new co-owners of Birmingham Phoenix are co-owners of Birmingham City FC.

As a result, a multi-club ownership model is partly driving the acquisition of stakes in some, but not all, of the Hundred franchises. We have seen similar strategies adopted by football clubs and there are some concerns about how this will affect the game.

Third, Table 1 shows that there is a large variation in the prices paid and therefore perceived values of the different franchises. In this regard, London Spirit stands out. The team appears to have been valued almost three times higher than the other franchises.

One possible explanation is the London location and the host venue being Lord’s, widely described as the home of cricket. Further, an intense bidding war broke out for this franchise, with Cain International (subsequent purchasers of a stake in Trent Rockets) eventually outbid.

Why are these individuals and companies buying the franchises – and what might be the implications for the competition’s future?

One uncertainty is why these owners are spending such large sums of money on buying the franchises. The costs of running a franchise in the Hundred are increasing.

The ECB had an agreement in place to increase the fees paid to the host counties as the tournament became more established. They also recently agreed to raise the salary cap to attract more high-profile overseas players.

What’s more, the competition loses money on ticket sales and the number of viewers watching the TV coverage via a Sky Sports subscription has gradually declined since the first season. The ECB had previously agreed a deal with Sky Sports in which coverage of the Hundred was bundled in with the rights for international cricket. This deal is due for renewal for 2028 onwards.

The ECB has also been negotiating with the new owners to agree a revised participation agreement that governs the organisation of the tournament. The agreement’s coverage includes the TV rights, sponsorship deals and voting rights on the running of the competition.

After some debate, it has been agreed that the TV rights for the Hundred will, at least for now, remain packaged together with the international rights that the ECB sells – allowing the ECB to maintain their current relationship with Sky Sports.

Nevertheless, the agreement will allow the franchises to secure their own sponsorship agreements, and the new owners will have considerable voting rights on the organisation of the competition.

While there may be little scope to increase revenues from selling domestic TV rights, the new owners may see potential to sell the overseas rights. Reliance Industries, the new co-owners of Oval Invincibles, are well placed to assess this as they have a joint venture with Disney and own the telecoms firm that has the IPL streaming rights in India.

Both on TV and more widely, a key growth area is expected to be the women’s Hundred as this part of the game is rapidly expanding.

The differences between the new owners outlined above indicate that they will have varying interests in how the Hundred develops. Sports economics research provides insights into how diverse owner incentives affect sports leagues (see, for example, Madden, 2012 and Peeters and Szymanski, 2013).

One possibility is that the IPL owners may use the Hundred to promote their team brand or to test out and recruit new players. There are already suggestions that the multi-franchise owners will share players across competitions. This makes it more likely that we will see Indian players in the Hundred, particularly in the men’s competition. So far, restrictions imposed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India have prevented them from taking part.

Coaches may even see the Hundred as an opportunity to experiment with alternative strategies. The priority for these owners will be the IPL, which has established itself as the world’s richest and most high-profile cricket competition.

In the short run, the participation agreement prevents significant changes to the competition. Over the longer term, it is possible that the new owners may look to change its organisation. For example, they may consider increasing the number of teams and expanding the window in which the tournament takes place. There has also been speculation that the competition will switch to the more established T20 format.

In the future, the ECB may find itself in a difficult position trying to accommodate the wealthy owners and their varying interests in how the competition is run, especially given the significant voting rights that they have been given.

What are the implications of the sale for the domestic game more broadly?

The sale of the Hundred franchises will see over £50 million going into the recreational game. This will potentially provide improved facilities, equipment and more coaching. Although this is much needed – and will add to the £35 million government investment via the ECB’s state school action plan – this will only go some way to addressing the massive inequality in cricket provision between state and private schools in the UK.

The sales will also provide a much needed revenue boost for the counties. Some of the smaller counties are struggling financially – for example, Gloucestershire announced losses of over £1 million in 2024. and some others have required bailouts from the ECB. It is important that they spend this wisely. Worcestershire, for example, plan to use the money to develop a new ground as their current home has major issues with flooding.

Once the windfall from the sale is spent, there needs to be a thriving domestic game that is financially viable. Already there is much disquiet about the effect of the Hundred competition on the domestic game.

Players are taken from counties, and prime time in the summer is no longer available for the domestic County Championship while the Hundred competition takes place. The Hundred also detracts attention from the counties’ own domestic T20 Blast competition.

All of these effects on the domestic game may get worse as the ECB is put under pressure from the private owners to change and develop the Hundred. Added to this, as private firms take more control, there may be less revenue to distribute to the counties.

The sale of the Hundred franchises may also affect the competitive balance of the county game. Host counties are either getting a big windfall now or a share in potentially growing revenue in future. This will cause the gap in finances between rich and poor counties to grow wider.

The knock-on effect is that it becomes harder and harder for smaller counties to compete with the bigger richer counties. Sports economics research focuses considerable attention on analysing competitive balance, for example, showing that when it declines, this can significantly affect viewers’ enjoyment of the sport (van der Burg, 2023).

Most of the counties are member-owned and they are important community assets. Further, while there is a widespread perception that county games are watched by tiny numbers of people, attendances are actually healthy, despite games being scheduled at less popular times to accommodate the Hundred. It is also important to recognise that the counties play a pivotal role in investing in and developing new talent.

The sale of the Hundred franchises to private owners feels like a pivotal time for domestic cricket in the UK. For the future of the sport, the potential harm to the county game needs to be recognised and mitigated.

03/07

Freddie McCann has been snaffled away from Notts Outlaws' Metro Bank Cup campaign potentially by Birmingham Phoenix. A widcard or injury replacement you have to wonder, but his development would be better served by playing List A cricket 

30/04

Hundred franchise deals worth £520m are still not signed – here is why

Exclusivity period after the big-money auction has been extended again, with contract negotiations expected to drag on all summer

Will Macpherson 30/04

The eight contracts for the £520 million Hundred sell-off remain unsigned, with this week’s extended second deadline to sign expected to be missed.

Some of the deals are expected to drag on all summer, despite a new financial incentive from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) designed to persuade owners to put pen to paper.

In February, the ECB held an auction to sell stakes in the eight teams, which drew bids valuing the franchises at £975 million, creating a windfall of £520 million for the game.

After the auction, the investors entered a period of exclusivity with the host venues to thrash out final details of their new partnerships. But Telegraph Sport reported last month that the exclusivity period was being extended over a series of sticking points for the investors in the “participation agreement”.

That extension until the end of April will come and go without any of the eight deals being signed. A revised participation agreement is due to be sent out to all parties this week, which could finally see movement on some of the deals.

Who is ready to sign?

Most of the deals are ready to be signed, but the two London franchises are causing the hold ups.

Surrey’s partnership with the Ambanis, Asia’s richest family and the owners of Mumbai Indians, is causing the most lag, but the deal between Marylebone Cricket Club (the owners of Lord’s) and Cricket Investor Holdings, the American-led consortium of ‘Tech Titans’ is also some way from being signed.

Insiders believe that negotiations over these two deals could rumble on to the end of the English season, but there are other investors seeking changes to the contract too. There is growing frustration among some parties about the delays.

The ECB has offered an incentive for investors who sign promptly. Those who sign before this year’s tournament will receive a slice of their team’s profits. Those who wait until after this year’s tournament to sign will not.

There is thought to be a further incentive for some of the investors to sign soon: the plummeting value of the US dollar against the pound. Four of the investors are from the USA: the Tech Titans, Welsh Fire’s Sanjay Govil, Birmingham Phoenix partners Knighthead Capital and Trent Rockets’ deal with Cain International (which includes Chelsea co-chairman Todd Boehly) and Ares Management. Since they agreed the price, their dollars have reduced in value, making their investments more expensive.

What is causing the hold ups?

Earlier in April, Richard Gould, the ECB CEO, and Vikram Banerjee, who now runs the Hundred, flew to India to meet investors. Delegations from Surrey, Hampshire and Lancashire have also made trips to meet their Indian Premier League partners. These meetings seem to have solved some but not all the issues.

A major sticking point was the “bundling” of UK broadcast rights for the next four-year cycle (2029-32) – ie the ECB selling the Hundred rights in the same package as the rest of their offering, most notably international cricket.

Understandably, investors wanted to be able to sell the Hundred rights separately themselves (especially as the Ambanis and Tech Titans have business in the media world). The ECB preferred the bundled option, because by then the Hundred will still be a relatively new competition that suits being housed alongside the rest of their offering – likely still on Sky (who played a key role in creating the tournament and are important allies of the ECB).

In the end, the rights will remain bundled when they go to market (likely in about two years’ time), a win for the ECB. Broadcasters will itemise their bids, so the Hundred owners know exactly what their competition is worth, and the Hundred will have a floor valuation of £51 million a year (the overall deal is currently worth around £220 million a year).

The investors will control the selling of rights in other territories, offering further opportunity for a return on investment. From 2033, the UK rights will be unbundled, meaning Sky would have to bid for the Hundred separately from international cricket if it wanted to hold onto both.

The ECB has made a number of concessions during the negotiating process, including allowing teams to take greater control of their own sponsorship deals. They have also ceded control of voting rights on the new 20-strong Hundred Board. They would hold just a third of voting rights over the future of the competition.

Nevertheless, some investors – notably the infamously commercially hard-nosed Ambanis – have problems with the participation agreement as it stands, and are still making further commercial demands.

What are the key players saying?

Speaking at the start of April, Gould expected that the deals would be done “in the next month or so, perhaps sooner”, adding “some parties are absolutely ready to go now, others have additional questions. It’s the quality of the conversations and not timescale we’re focused on”.

Last week, Surrey CEO Steve Elworthy appeared on the Business of Sport podcast, speaking about his visit to Mumbai with chairman Oli Slipper (listen below).

“Most of the negotiations around the Hundred stuff has been happening via lawyers, so you get a bit of a feeling of how the relationship is through the lens of a legal conversation, which is not ideal,” he said.

“We spent every hour of every day with the [Ambani] team. We came away really enthused about the partnership.

“We have a contract to negotiate, they are putting significant money in, and we have a bit of work to do there. At the same time, once that contract is done, they are going to be fantastic partners.”

Appearing on the Final Word cricket podcast last week, Gould also admitted that it could take a “few months” yet.

“The process is still ongoing,” he said. “We are not in contract, so we are not making any huge assumptions because that would weaken our position elsewhere. But subject to us being able to complete on those within the next few weeks or few months, which I think is very likely, it does put the game in a very different position. Hopefully £50 million into grass-roots cricket, £500 million going through the professional game, which will be spent on good things which will sustain the game for the next 20-25 years.

“There’s a whole host of points that people want to address. Some of the investors are good to go now, others are asking questions. If you look at the amount of investment that has come into the game, and more importantly the quality of the investor, that is a game changer for us, and we are very happy to spend more time than we originally planned getting a base level of agreement. No one is trying to look at the value and reduce what they are paying. Those conversations have not taken place.”

Could any of the eight deals collapse?

In short, this seems highly unlikely. But the ECB and the host venues may find themselves ceding a little more ground yet. As a source close to the investors said: “the owners hold all the cards”.

29/04

Today was Deadline-Day for conclusion of discussions between Host Counties and the External Cash Cows that bought the ECB's 49% stakes in the Hun-dread franchises.

28/04

IPL Expansion 2028